What happens to the Thackerays and Pawars now? Family pacts fail in Mumbai, Pune strongholds

BMC results: Family legacies appear to be in a shambles with results of Maharashtra municipal polls, despite divergent branches coming together after long gaps

The 2022–23 splits of the Thackerays' Shiv Sena and Pawars' NCP in Maharashtra landed their breakaway groups in a BJP-led government in the state; but the implosions are taking full effect only gradually. The family legacies appeared to be in a shambles on Friday, after the results of the municipal elections in their strongholds of Mumbai and Pune.

MNS Leader Raj Thackeray and with Shiv Sena (UBT) leaders Uddhav Thackeray and Sanjay Raut at a press conference where they released a joint manifesto ahead of the BMC polls. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT File Photo)

That, when the clans' divergent branches had come together after long gaps.

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BMC election results: Thackeray reunion couldn;t stop Hindutva brigade, show trends

At the centre of this election is Mumbai, where Uddhav Thackeray's making up with cousin Raj after two decades did not seem to have meant much in the end. The rule of the undivided Shiv Sena founded by Uddhav's late father Bal Thackeray lasted 25 years here — with and without the BJP — until 2022, since when the civic body elections in the state were pending.

Going by data at 9:30 pm, the BJP plus deputy CM Eknath Shinde's Shiv Sena, which got the original Sena's name and symbol after the 2022 split, stormed to power in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), India's richest local body that manages the country's financial capital.

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Eknath Shinde has long claimed Bal Thackeray's aggressive legacy of Hindutva, terming the relatively moderate Uddhav as having diverged by aligning for power with the Congress and Sharad Pawar's NCP. That was his stated logic for breaking away in 2022 with BJP's support to oust and replace Uddhav as CM. Shinde is now deputy to CM Devendra Fadnavis since the 2024 assembly election.

In the fight for a legacy of street aggression, Raj Thackeray and his Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) brought back some of the original Thackeray flavour.

Having broken away after Bal Thackeray chose son Uddhav over him as his successor two decades ago, Raj deployed trademark anti-migrant sentiment; laid a claim to the ‘Marathi manoos’ vote bank; and recycled Bal Thackeray's original slogans from the 1960s, back when the anti-'outsider' sentiment was directed more against South Indians, unlike now when North Indians from UP and Bihar bear the brunt.

“Hatao lungi, bajao pungi,” Raj harked back, attacking BJP's Tamil Nadu leader K Annamalai by making fun of clothing traditionally worn by many South Indians.

But that boat appears to have sailed. Even Bal Thackeray had long shifted to a BJP-adjacent Hindutva line in his politics with the anti-migrant stance as plus-one.

Uddhav and Raj have not lost too badly in the BMC, and may still call BJP's Hindutva fake. But the lack of raw political power would now mean they have a central question to answer for themselves: What's their Senas' core ideology?

What happens to the two NCPs now? Ominous signs from Pune

The Sharad Pawar-Ajit Pawar uncle-nephew split of 2023 was more straightforward in one sense — there was no family outsider like Shinde involved in their feud.

Their making up also happened more quickly thus, for the municipal elections in Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad, even when Ajit remains the second deputy CM in the BJP-led state government.

But in both Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, their strongholds, the Pawars remained far from power. The BJP won Pune, with Ajit's NCP second.

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Maharashtra deputy CM Ajit Pawar with his cousin Supriya Sule and others during the release of their manifesto for Pune. (File Photo: X/@supriya_sule)

The Pimpri-Chinchwad corporation, considered one of the richest after Mumbai's, was held by Sharad Pawar's undivided NCP since 2017 until the end of the last term in 2022. Here, too, the BJP was far ahead with Ajit Pawar's NCP second but Sharad Pawar's party much behind.

This puts a spanner again in talk that the Pawars may even come back together at the state and central levels. There was chatter of a plum post for Supriya Sule at the Centre as part of the “deal”. All that is eclipsed by ground realities and lost strength now. Until or unless, Maharashtra sees another big churn within families and alliances.